That's true Elohim, but I wouldn't advise it when dealing with low-latency applications especially ones that deal heavily with specialised hardware, dual-booting would probably be a better idea. If you have to do professional audio it is probably better to use the apps eggzoomin mentions, due in no small part to them being more mature and the ability to recognise industry accepted formats. I have heard there are more small recording studios turning to Jack/Ardour just from a cost aspect, because the don't have the funds for a professional suite.

I dualboot but haven't used any emulators or VMs, never really had the need to, I did have a little play with VMware but I only ever got it to load grub then it would just stop, I never found out what the problem was. I only boot into windows for final testing of websites in IE, may it suffer a quick but excruciatingly painful departure from desktops, everywhere!

A couple days into Ubuntu and it's going pretty well. Amarok is still being a bit of a jerk but i think thats more me just getting used to it (tomorrow we try to get my ipod to work, oh joy!). Other than that, everything i need is in the Add/remove programs list and if you can't find something (like Google Earth for instance) the forums are good about getting you set up. I'm happy so far, anyone else take the plunge?

I flirted with Mandrake three years ago, but gave it up as being too buggy (and its parent company too eager to dig into my wallet). A network-administrator friend asked me to give Ubuntu a try, since he'd installed it on one of his company machines and liked it a great deal. I went with a dual-boot box at first, but when refurbishing my computer for the new TCJ job, I ditched the Windows partition two years ago and haven't looked back since.

Ubuntu's free, all the software is free, it does everything I need it to do, and generally kicks ass. What more do you want?

If your interested, there is also a program in fairly early beta called Songbird, it's actually based off the Mozilla stack. It has a plugin for ipod support, and seems to work fairly smoothly, and the skin looks pretty slick.

I'm on a dual boot with Ubuntu at both work and home, and I'm generally pretty happy with it. Easy enough to set up, and only a little work figuring out how to handle some of the obscure bits. One thing though - dual monitor support on Ubuntu is cruddy - a coworker was trying to get it to work and got nowhere.

Just a note on Songbird. It's got a lot of experience in media players behind it and Mozilla as a base. It's a little odd using it as a media player at the mo. The interface is iTunes-y but the USP is the app's instant playlist creation for anything it finds on a website. For example, just pop over to piccadillyrecords.com and then any page. For some reason it's still only at v0.3 with v0.4 due in Jnaury now I'd guess but its an interesting mashup and should becoem more so if they start to integrate some of VLC into it.

We just released 0.4rc1 last night. We're hoping to make 0.4 final by the New Year. On Windows/Mac, we already use VLC for our media core playback. On Linux we use GStreamer for all the media decoding. Is there something specific you think VLC would provide us on Linux that GStreamer doesn't?

@stevel: Sorry - it wasn't a specific comment \ critique of VLC vs GStreamer per se. First I'd heard of GStreamer actually. My big wish for it at the moment is for RSS (Podcast) subscription for auto-downloads. If it's already there I haven't found it.

@hmobius: No worries, wasn't interpreted as a critique :) We have subscription support for music blogs, but no current way to subscribe to podcasts for auto-downloads. That's definitely on our roadmap though, I think in the next release or two (we're on 6-8 week release cycles, so that's not as far off as it sounds :))

I'm a professional Unix guy since the 80s, etc, used and supported most major Linux variants (rpm-style RedHat/CentOS/SuSe, debian-style, from source-style, and other deviants) and Win and Mac. I think the questions boil down to what you want to do with your computer. Gamers who care about refresh rate and optimal rendering are going to need Win, video producers are going to need a Mac. Scientists running compute clusters will need Linux.

The Pro and Con question is hard to answer. I think a more telling question is: what linux distro is the best "modern" desktop replacement and what are the downsides?

Two years ago, I would have said SuSE. It included the more software and config choices than say Red Hat/Fedora/CentOS, the YaST gui admin was decent, and things like USB devices and multimedia formats and tools worked better and looked good. SUSE slid a bit in the transition from the Germans to Novell in the last 2 years it was just plain eclipsed by Ubuntu.

I am extremely impressed with Ubuntu 7.10. The "Synaptic Package Manager" is very simple to use. Admin interfaces simple. Support for all manner of USB devices is impressive. Attach a camera or a USB stick and the right stuff happens. There are still "typical" linuxism, but Ubuntu and it's wonderful support forums knock them down quickly. One example of a current issue is support for the latest Flash 9 player in web browsers under 64-bit installs. It doesn't "just work", but there are FAQs out there to help. But it took me a bit of tweaking to make it work and I do this for a living. Once it was working, I was watching the newly launched MSNBC video player and it worked as well in Ubuntu as it did under Mac or Linux. (Well, except for full screen...).

So I would have to say if you are a Win/Mac type person looking to get into Linux, I will third and fourth the recommendations of this board and suggest Ubuntu. Instead of the pain of configuring dual-booting, note that there is a VMWare player included in the packages for free. VMWare will host guest operating systems in a slightly slower virtual host. So you can run Windows apps and Microsoft software. Also check out Parallels for Linux. Intel Core 2 Duo chips support hardware virtualization which avoids the software slowness by passing commands directly to the CPU from guest OSes. You can run REAL Windows at native speeds under Linux. Graphics hardware is lagging a bit, some gamers probably still need to dual-boot.

[RELIGIOUS MODE ENGAGE] What is the BEST desktop platform right now?

Mac on Intel. Here's why.

It is UNIX and based largely on FreeBSD (my favorite OS). You get UNIX tools and software free, the best GUI interface, and you get the vastly awesome mac Multimedia capabilites: sound, graphics, video. You can expect your cameras, scanners and printers to "just work" (Ubuntu still lags). Leopard is VERY NICE and innovations like the total backup solution Time Machine are compelling.

But the killer sale is using Parallels and BootCamp. BootCamp is a Windows dual-boot partition, but installed via an Apple supported installer that could walk your Grandma through the process. Making a dual-boot computer has wrecked more hardened sysadmins than I can count but BootCamp is easy. Install Parallels 3.0 you have the COMPLETE PACKAGE. You can now use the DISK PARTITION of bootcamp as your "virtual Windows Machine". Translation: you can run windows inside Mac as a virtual host running at near native speeds. The new "coherence" mode of Parallels shares your desktop and cut and paste buffers transparently between Windows apps and Mac apps. It is mind blowing to see it work. I have my Mac Doc at the bottom of the screen, and the Windows Start menu at the top. BUT, if you need to play BioShock, you just go to preferences and select your Windows disk and reboot. At that point, you have a full-fledged Windows Only machine and Gamers will be very satisfied with the frame rates. To put the dollop of whipped creme on top, I also run an Ubuntu guest operating system under Parallels. There are differences between the UNIX/*BSD origins of Mac's OS X and Linux, so it's nice to crank up a pure Linux environment esp for certain Open Source software.

So there you go. If you get a Mac with Parallels, you get UNIX/*BSD/Linux/Max OS X/Windows, all at native speeds.

I'll save talking about the built in Green Screen technology in the Leopard version of iChat for later... but iChat is certainly the Mac Killer App. It's worth having a Mac just so you can do the 3 or 4 person round-the-world iChat conference. I do an Australia/California/Michigan iChat a couple times a month and it is so much better than a phone call. Now that I can have fish swimming around my head during the call, I feel like my life has reached some kind of pinnacle.